Arditti Quartet recitals are hardly a regular fixture on the London calendar
these days, so one featuring new and unfamilar repertoire was an appealing
prospect.

Not that Adrian Jack is an unfamiliar name to devotees of new music, having
been responsible for several series of innovative and thought-provoking New
MusICA concerts at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, and a regular
contributor to The Independent and several music journals. Whether
or not composition has been a continual pursuit, the string quartet medium
has clearly exerted its grip in recent years. The Third Quartet dates from
1997, its successor from two years later, and, after a false start which
yielded the single movement opening tonight's second half, a fifth has recently
been completed.

In the context of Janácek's unashamedly autobiographical works, Jack's
quartets were characterised by an inherent abstraction. Musical coherence
is apparent at all levels, from consistency of texture to the motivic unity
between movements and across the quartets themselves. The teasingly elusive
quality of Quartet No. 3's opening movement, barely offset by the scherzo's
rhythmic cross-play, only becomes explicit when the gradually cumulative
finale turns full circle to its thematic origins. Quartet No. 4 is differently
structured, progressing from a light, airy movement, through an often wistful
intermezzo, to a finale which clinches the work as much by intensification
of mood as by formal logic. 08.02.01 has demonstrably greater variety
of ideas and dynamic profile: a satisfying entity in itself, as Jack
discovered.

Not music with which the Arditti's are much associated these days - though
some will remember their playing Gavin Bryars' First Quartet back in the
early 1980s, which shares at least superficial similarities in demeanour
- their committed restraint must surely have pleased the composer. If
Janácek's tensile energy and emotional plangency would seem more in
keeping with their 'core repertoire', this was not always the case in the
Kreuzer Sonata, where only the lacerating final movement seemed to
galvanise the players. Not so Intimate Letters, whose rapier-like
attack and passionate abandon combined in a performance of towering intensity.
The Arditti's should programme it again soon, perhaps with Jack's Fifth Quartet
and a work likely outside their repertoire but relevant to so much of it
- Smetana's Second Quartet.

As an ensemble, the Arditti's are perhaps playing better than ever. Their
next London concert, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on April 19, should be well
worth catching.